Jen Smith Interviewed by John Davis January 2, 2019 Los Angeles, CA

Jen Smith Interviewed by John Davis January 2, 2019 Los Angeles, CA. 0:00:00 to 1:03:46

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0:00:00

Davis: Today is January 2nd, 2019. My name is John Davis, and I'm the Performing Arts Metadata Archivist at the University of Maryland. Today, I'm speaking with Jen Smith. We're going to talk about the zines that you worked on when you lived in D.C. And I suppose to set that up, if you could just sort of tell me about how you first got into punk in the first place.

Smith: Sure. […] So, I went to H-B Woodlawn in Arlington, Virginia. At that time, that school was for, kind of, misfits and weirdos. Plus, also there was, like, half people who were that way and then half people who were rich kids.

So, Woodlawn had a strong background of punk shows [and] all of my peers were into music. Before I was at school there, all the Dischord bands played. Because also Amy Pickering had gone to school there. I think that’s accurate. That was before I was a student there. So, I was interested in music. There was music at school. My peers were going. I’d go to hardcore shows.

When I was 16, I spent a lot of that summer literally walking from my parents’ house in Arlington to shows in D.C. So, I saw a lot of bands that summer in a space that I think was called—Complex, maybe? It was sort of like a bondage SM club that they were having shows there. So, I saw Sonic Youth and basically kind of whatever was going on. […] I saw Beefeater and—I forget what Ian’s band between Minor Threat and Fugazi was called. Do you remember?

Davis: Embrace?

Smith: Embrace. Yeah, I saw Embrace. I had gone to one of those protests at the South African embassy. But I wasn’t in the D.C. scene. So, I was seeing music mostly from other bands from all kinds of places. […] I kept going to shows in that way for a long time. I think I was maybe 19 when I started specifically—I dated somebody who was involved with that part of the music scene, and we probably met at d.c. space or something. I actually know we met at d.c. space. I met Seth [Lorinczi] through d.c. space.

0:03:00

Yeah, so I dated somebody from that scene, and then got way more involved with specifically going to Dischord band shows and being involved with the kind of community more. So, like, the group house community. That was, I think, probably like ’89, ’90.

And then I—just was like, “Oh, my friend’s moving out. Do you want to move in?” So, I lived in The Embassy from probably the Fall of ’90 to another group [house] for, I don’t know, nine months to a year, and then […] started a new group house with some other women, including Lois Maffeo and Melissa Klein and Nikki Chapman.

I was at that time also a student. I was college age, and I started going to University of Maryland in the Fall of ’91, as well. So, when I was in school, I stayed in D.C. until I graduated from college, which was December of ’93, and moved away in January of ’94.

Davis: So you graduated from the University of Maryland in ’93.

Smith: Yes.

Davis: Was there anything interesting happening on campus during those years that you were there?

Smith: Not necessarily, no. My memories of it are—they're kind of more like what was culturally interesting or, like, queer activism. Not that there were no gay people in the D.C. punk [community], but there were not that many. So like being at Maryland, I was like, “There’s a clearly gay woman with a shaved head.” [laugh] In some ways, it was sort of exposure to, I don’t know, women’s studies groups and stuff like that.

I mean, I was in women’s studies classes, which is what we called them back then. And that was kind of concurrent with, you know, I guess Bikini Kill came to D.C. I think in ’92. And Allison [Wolfe] and Molly [Neuman] and Erin [Smith] I think was—that was like maybe the Spring of ’92, I think? Or maybe that was ’91? It was ’91. Anyway. I was living at The Embassy when that stuff was happening. So when the Mount Pleasant riot happened [in May 1991], I lived at The Embassy.

0:06:01

2 All the bands like Nation of Ulysses and Circus Lupus and Severin practiced at our house, and Autoclave. Kind of everybody. We were all kind of living together.

Davis: Going back to the mid-to-late-‘80s when you first were getting into the scene, were there any zines that stood out to you at all?

Smith: I don’t think I ever knew what a zine was until like ’91. I don’t think I ever saw one before.

Davis: And what was it that kind of introduced that idea to you?

Smith: I'm trying to think if I had seen—I don’t think so—if we did those Riot Grrrl zines before I made my first zine. But I think I made my first zine beforehand. I had some exposure through a woman named—oh my god—Laura McDougall, who had moved to the D.C. area briefly from San Francisco, and also Donna Dresch. So I saw zines from those guys, zines that they had made. Zines like other queer zines from Canada. […] Maybe also from Lois [Maffeo], there was exposure to people making zines from other places. So, [the] K Records kind of extended scene, but there was also this English contingent as well. Oh, yeah, and then there were San Francisco zines. So there was this other one called—sorry— Greta from San Francisco. If you're a zine person, do you know who that is?

Davis: I don’t think so.

Smith: It was pretty—in my mind—sort of seminal at the time. She was into biking. Like, bicycling. And it was like a very graphically well put together zine. I cannot remember what the name of it is right now. But anyway, so just zines from other places. And I suspect that was through Laura and Lois. I'm not exactly sure how they passed through to me, but…

Davis: So, what made you want to do one?

Smith: […] I had a band at Woodlawn. We just played garbage cans and stuff. Like, we just did not know how to play. But I've always had a very participatory nature.

0:09:03

So even in high school, I was like, “Gonna do a thing!” So, I think having some exposure to it, I was like, “I'm gonna make my own!” So, I just wanted to make my own. So, I did.

Davis: What was the first one?

3 Smith: The first zine I ever made was called Red Rover.

Davis: This was before the Riot Grrrl fanzine, but—probably slightly?

Smith: I think so. I think so. I mean, somebody—Ian [MacKaye] could even probably tell you. [laugh] Because I'm just like—my dates are not good. I think maybe Riot Grrrl was first, though. I don’t remember.

Davis: Which you contributed to.

Smith: Yes.

Davis: And you're credited with that title as well.

Smith: And we also actually have—yes. We also—in my house with Lois, […] we made a zine from our house called Flamer. Have you ever seen one of these?

Davis: I haven't. No.

Smith: Well, they were wonderful. I have to say they were really [laugh] super goofy. And I wonder if I—I just was at my parents’ house, and there’s like a box of stuff in the corner that I was—I was like, “Oh, I wonder what’s in there.” I barely looked at it, and I saw Red Rover originals. So actually, I have to go back in probably February, so I'll come through there and try to find some stuff for you, because I—I know I'm a very bad historian of myself.

Davis: [laugh]

Smith: Somebody just asked me about some band stuff from like ’96, ’95, some time like that. And I was like, “I don’t have a copy of that, but my mother might.” Because I often sent her things. So yeah, Riot Grrrl, I am credited with that, which is sweet, because I feel like it’s certainly much more of an event—I mean, like the zeitgeist—my naming of it was not a naming. It was just sort of plucked from correspondence and became the zeitgeist that it was.

Davis: Right. And you were commenting on the Mount Pleasant riots, which you had…

Smith: Correct, yeah.

Davis: …you had mentioned before. What was that experience like for you?

4 Smith: Well, I never—I didn’t go. I thought it was troublesome that the people—the kind of young, mostly white kids at that time in D.C.—I felt like that was not our struggle. Like the struggle was between the police and the Salvadorian immigrants. And I felt like we don’t really have a—I thought it was not cool to go up, because I felt like it was—I didn’t feel like I knew enough about—I wasn’t going to be an ally. And the people from our house weren’t going to be allies to Salvadorians; they're just there for the ruckus. I've just never been that kind of—I don’t mind a ruckus, but I'm like ally or support or like an actual political engagement, as opposed to the sort of fashion of, or the demonstration of interest, not actually interest.

0:12:12

So I stayed home. It was, of course, quite near, and everybody was—I read about it in the news. I saw the sort of aftermath. And I saw my roommates tumbling up there and tumbling back.

Davis: Did they relate anything about the experience?

Smith: Oh, like cars being on fire, and we threw a—you know. I think people—you know. I think people participated in making a ruckus.

Davis: But it did seem like that event did kind of inspire this—what you had already talked about. Not just the name of a fanzine but sort of—you know, Nation of Ulysses was going on at the time, and sort of talking about kind of whatever—revolting.

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: And it sort of timed interestingly within the scene, because there is sort of this revolution within the scene…

Smith: Right.

Davis: …that happened. And I don’t know how much of an inspiration that event was, but when you were saying whatever you said in your correspondence, what were you hoping to see change?

Smith: Well, I will also backtrack to say Ian Svenonius’s zines around Nation of Ulysses—that is something that I saw that I was also like, “Wow, this is very awesome and cool.” So actually thinking about that, I'm like, “Well, that was some early exposure.” So that was in ’90.

Davis: That was Ulysses Speaks? Is that what it was called?

5 Smith: Yeah. Those were great. Watching Ulysses or those guys, I was like—and really even moving out of that environment, I always felt like there was a lot of rhetoric and a lot of like “it’s fun to be anti-capitalist.” Which it is fun to be anti-capitalist. But I also felt like there was a lot of reiteration of kind of cultural—there’s nothing too radical about looking cool and being skinny, for instance. And they just seemed—it felt like a lot of like, “OK.” It didn’t—that stuff didn’t feel political to me. But it reads well, you know? Right?

But at the same time […] I mean, I was born in 1970. I've always cared about feminism. Like the Equal Rights Amendment was something that was—like me and my mom, who is not necessarily a political person, drove from Annandale, Virginia to go march on the Mall for equal rights. You know, for the ERA.

0:15:11

And as an 11-year-old, I wanted to be a Boy Scout, and I […] had t-shirts that said “Ms.” and just that […] idea of the equality of women, quote, was always something that was on my mind. And I've always been a very boisterous and bossy person. [laugh] So, that was always in my interest. So you know, part of rock ‘n’ roll, part of being part of the D.C. scene, was really about kind of having some kind of agency.

And then specifically for me, caring about feminist issues, and also about queer issues, I was inspired or motivated by things that were happening. It was kind of a certain height of AIDS activism that was happening. And that was something that I was tangentially inspired by, but not—and I was volunteering at Walt Whitman [sic], and kind of participating lightly but not with the same—I didn’t live with people from Walt Whitman [sic], you know? Not Walt Whitman…

Davis: Whitman-Walker [Clinic, a non-profit health care center in D.C. that specializes in HIV/AIDS healthcare and LGBT healthcare].

Smith: Whitman-Walker, I'm sorry. I lived with punks. You know? Anyway, I'm kind of—I think I'm losing focus here. So for me, when I think about it just culturally, obviously meeting those women or dialoguing—which is meeting and just being girls in a scene that was predominantly male—that first summer that I started being part of the punk scene, I would go to these house parties, and there would be like—like before, I said I was going to shows, but I was friends with these goth girls, and we could go— from like ’88 to ’90—I could go to 9:30. I could go to the—I think

6 it’s called Fifth Column. d.c. space. I kind of knew all these people, and I was—I have since seen pictures of myself at this age, and I was kinda glamorous, you know? Like, I've never really regarded my looks as—mine or other people’s looks have always been pretty incidental, but when I—[laugh] I recently—you know, 25 years later saw a picture of myself, I was like, “No wonder you got in free! You look good!” [laugh] You know?

Davis: [laugh]

0:18:00

Smith: But, so, I would go and just was kind of a club kid, in a way, but going between music to dancing to, you know, whatever’s going on at d.c. space. So, I went to a house party, and everybody was— there were a bunch of boys dancing to James Brown. And I was like, “Fuck yeah, we're gonna dance!” So, I danced, but I was like the only woman dancing, in kind of a just a living room filled with 20- to 25-year-old boys, you know?

And even that was like—I feel like there—maybe the cultural revolution was, I think that a lot of—I feel a little bit like talking out of turn because I've never actually had a conversation with somebody like Cynthia [Connolly] or—but there are women from this other era—like Fire Party would be a representation of that—I think that they are to be regarded—this is as an outsider, truly, because I haven't had this conversation—but I always felt like, oh, there was this like—they weren’t glamorous in any way. They wore Carhartts. They dressed exactly like the boys. They sort of had exactly the boys’ interest in things.

And there’s part of me that feels like regarding that now, historically, it was like that is what was necessary to be regarded as a serious person. I was never a serious person. I didn’t need that affirmation. I already had a thing by the time I showed up into that part of the D.C. scene.

I was obviously in some D.C. scene, you know? I had worked at the vintage clothing store, Classic Clothing, and like made my own clothes. And me and my friends had kind of like deeply our own style, and we were sort of stylish. Or we—at least to say we weren’t dressed in Carhartts. We were wearing kind of frilly clothes. I mean, things that are sort of quintessentially thought of as that style of the time, was sort of what we were doing. Whereas women who were slightly older who had sort of been more enmeshed in the scene seemed much more in gray. You know?

7 Gray Carhartts, gray t-shirt, and shaved heads. You know? Or it’s rough equivalent. So, all of that.

But I still had deep investments, even at that time, even dressed in a kind of goth psychedelic way or whatever, in feminism. So, I think it seemed more fun. Like that Ulysses scene was fun, you know? And I liked dancing. But it was—I do realize—and then having talked to Ian since, he was like, “Yeah, you had your own thing.” You know? Like, “I hadn’t seen anything like that before.”

0:21:01

So, when kind of what became Riot Grrrl—when the sort of percolations of that happened, I was interested in that. I was interested in that because I was dancing with these guys in a very friendly, I would say, pro—didn’t feel aggressive. It was fun, but there weren’t any girls. And then also like—I also saw Government Issue shows. Like I also went to hardcore shows, which were deeply—like there weren’t any women in the pit because it was fucking super unsafe, you know?

And I didn’t have a lot of firsthand experience of bad things happening to me at the hands of people who were at shows like that, but I think growing up a girl, you're never far away from like, “This fuckin’ dude and his friends might decide they…” You know? Like rape culture. I mean, I don’t know. I was a teenager when I was aware that my—that I wasn’t safe. You know? And that made me fucking furious!

Still does, but I feel like as a 20-year-old and 21-year-old at that particular time, that—that’s why I wanted to talk to people in Olympia or in England or whatever, and kind of what I wanted to write about, too in myriad—different ways. I mean, I think some Red Rover—I remember writing a story about Ida B. Wells. And you know, just topics. So…

Davis: When you would make an issue, of Red Rover for instance, how many copies would you typically make? Roughly.

Smith: I have no idea. Maybe 20? And I certainly did not think of it in terms of numbering it or anything like that. And I wonder also where I made them.

Davis: Yeah, because that was my next question. [laugh]

Smith: Yeah. I don’t remember if I went to Kinkos. I mean, eventually there was like, “Oh, you're making a zine. Well, if you go to Kinkos, you can…” And this person, Greta, who I really feel

8 like—it might just come back to me while we're here—in her zine, she had how to get things for free from Kinkos. Like scams, you know?

Davis: The copy card.

Smith: Yeah, yeah. And the thing—you just knock it down, and then— you know.

Davis: [laugh]

Smith: I mean, I do remember going to Kinkos. I don’t remember—and then with Riot Grrrl, we were at Molly [Neuman]’s dad’s office, after hours. Yeah, so Kinkos probably, and a small run.

Davis: And laying them out was just handwritten, and cut and paste?

0:24:01

Smith: Yeah. With glue. You know, the glue stick, and X-ACTO, and stuff like that.

Davis: How did you get the zines out to people? Did you ever put them in stores? Did you sell them at shows?

Smith: I didn’t sell them in shows. I just mostly remember just giving them to people. And certainly that network of like oh, this person—like sending them to people. And I think I was listed somewhere in something, like send me a dollar and I'll send you a thing.

Davis: Do you remember—did that lead to any new relationships or people that you then became friends with through that?

Smith: Well, you know those early—Riot Grrrl was based on correspondences, you know? Like Molly and Allison came, and then we just wrote each other. And Tobi [Vail]—we just wrote each other. And I corresponded with someone who I never met, but was from England. Also Kicking Giant, who eventually was—had been in New York, and then moved to Olympia.

So, yeah, there were people that—I mean even Tae [Won Yu] and Rachel [Carns] were like really my friends. I'm not sure that I would count really anybody from Bikini Kill as people that I actually ended up having close friendship with, like having dinner with, or any—you know. It was much more of scene relationships, you know? But yeah. So definitely.

9 And certainly when I talk about—when I am asked—I haven't done too many interviews like this, but I certainly talk about—I did go to grad school, and I have talked a lot about my experience of coming up as an artist, which I always think of starting at zines and then bands and then actually more sort of formalized practices. But I always describe that, and also the kind of—this idea of like we as a community we found each other. […] You know? Yeah. But we just—and time was freer, and I had a lot of words coming out of me at the time, so I was able to write quite a lot to people.

Davis: So when you were doing Red Rover, that was solely just you?

Smith: Yes.

Davis: So what was it like to then collaborate with a group of people for something like the Riot Grrrl fanzines that you contributed to?

0:27:03

Smith: That first Riot Grrrl one was really like “sit down and do a thing, and then we're going to print it.” I don’t think we were there even for two hours. Very—“Do a thing! Go!” I don’t really remember much about it. It was very on the fly. So collaborating on it that first one was not—the second one, or third, or somewhere in there, I wrote something about the zine, and that, I got some like “what the hell?” kind of light pushback from that.

Davis: What was the complaint?

Smith: My complaint was—I think it was like The Young Idea, and—I'm in it to get old. Like I'm not very—as a 20-year-old, I was saying [laugh]—I was a 20- or 21-year-old. Which was true, you know? And I guess that is even going back to my comment earlier, part of was just feeling like—I'm here to be weird in a long-term way, not just like look at this cool thing that I got at the thrift store. We were very young people, and having different points of view about the agenda, the message, the manifestation or the impulse or drive. I mean varied. But we were going to shows together and certainly invested in this idea of doing something. And that was pretty fun.

Davis: What did someone take issue with out of that?

Smith: I think saying—like basically talking shit about The Young Idea, which was, you know, like really what Svenonius was talking about. And then later Guy [Picciotto] wrote a song about The Young Idea. And it’s—you know, The Jam. I mean, like this whole thing about kind of youth movement. I mean, I still stand by that

10 now. I feel like, as a teenager, I was excited to be an old person, and to be an eccentric old person.

Davis: How many issues of Red Rover did you do?

Smith: I think three, possibly more. Threeish. And then when I was at school, I wrote more zines, a lot more zines, sort of in relationship with my school work, through those women’s studies courses. I basically like gave those as my like projects.

0:30:06

Davis: How would you say Red Rover changed as you put out issues? Was there any sort of change or evolution?

Smith: Not that I can remember. I think I became more aware of formatting or, like, if you write in a thick pen and then you shrink it, it’s hard to read, or things like that. Kind of more aesthetic concerns. I think that the later zines that I did in D.C. and then more still when I moved to Olympia were much more conscious of the format, besides just like the self-production aspect. But this materialized when I was in Washington more. But I think like, oh this is just as—this zine is just an interview with one person. This zine is just small. More like one topic, you know, as opposed to I think my first—Red Rover was more like magazine format. You know, multiple subjects.

Davis: More formal?

Smith: More formal, and more broad. So I think they got smaller in content. And I think in D.C., it was still dot matrix time. So yeah, I think it was really when I was in Washington state that I was more like, “OK, this is more like a zine that unfolds like this.” Or more of a—I think more formal. I did make some zines when I lived—I went one summer to Olympia, and I made a couple of zines there. And that was more like, “Here are flowers. And I'm putting that on top of the printer.” So more kind of formal material playing around.

Davis: You got, I’d say, a good bit more radical in terms of how you laid out and presented zines, as you went along.

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: Like from the ones I've seen from later, like Josephine was a Diva, Josephine was a Spy, right? Those.

Smith: Mmhmm.

11 Davis: With these sort of very large…

Smith: Format, yeah.

Davis: …formats, which you know—and I know that’s not from when you were in D.C., but…

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: What were you seeking to express or explore by doing something different like that, and what was the response to a zine that was sort of…

Smith: Large-format?

Davis: …unwieldy, almost.

Smith: Well, for me, I think I was just interested in it, again, sort of formally, like as an art project, more than just like a “here’s my zine at a show” kind of thing. “Here’s my rant” or whatever.

0:33:00

And when I think about—like writing about Ida Wells is not too dissimilar from like that Josephine Was a Spy was like reading about her doing—I mean, she did carry secrets, you know, [laugh] for the resistance. And so it was sort of like partly a story about— kind of like in a similar way, of like here’s this history. But like looser. Like more like abstracted narrative. And maybe also more metaphorical, too, or like kind of use what we have.

And then also—I mean, Stella Marrs from Olympia was also like, “Assess your weapons.” Kind of like a high heel was a weapon, or like all this kind of beauty and glamour and glitz, but also like what—what can you do with that, too, that’s of radical import, you know?

Davis: By the mid-nineties, there was just such a glut of zines, as well, it seemed like.

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: And that’s actually how I took that zine in a way, which was sort of like, “I'm doing something apart from this.” You know, “Everybody’s doing these things that kind of look the same way, and I'm going to make this sort of very large, like beyond newsprint in some ways, kind of zine.”

12 Smith: Right.

Davis: And I don’t know if that’s an accurate assessment of how you felt, but…

Smith: Well, I don’t think—I mean, I am always—I don’t have a very good memory at the time of those things. But also I weirdly— anyway, I've always been just doing my thing, you know? So, I don’t even think I was like really trafficking myself in a lot of seeing people’s stuff. Like there were things that were important to me personally that I received that had more to do with kind of like formal aspects. But making those things larger was not in response to other people; it was more just my own kind of exploration.

At that time in Olympia, I was doing like this cabaret, and I wanted to do this cabaret because I—it was a similar thing of like it just— so much time at punk clubs, and there was all these—or like shows—but rock ‘n’ roll was only like really just, in my mind, part of the story. Like a third, a quarter of it. And there just didn’t seem to be a lot of showcasing of other creative impulses, you know? So in a way, I feel like I did that—and it was not a very good—I was like making songs on acoustic guitar, but I wasn’t—it’s weird, because I sort of went—I mean, this is—now I'm just kind of—I am rambling, now. I did just go to Olympia and hung out in that scene. And I felt like what I was able to do, like my own—I had access to an acoustic guitar.

0:36:04

I owned an acoustic guitar. So that’s what I did. But when I moved to San Francisco, I really realized—and I would go see all these bands. I mean, in Olympia, there’s a show; you just go. As a 25- year-old in Olympia, if there’s a show, you just go. So you would see, like, Karp, and Lois. Beat Happening. Like whoever came through. But I don’t really like that kind of twee acoustic-y kind of music. I don’t really listen to it now. I feel like when I moved to San Francisco, I was like, “Oh, I really just like rock. Rock ‘n’ roll.”

But I also wanted some space for other ideas to kind of literally have a showcase, because all the rock ‘n’ roll people—I mean particularly thinking about like Nation of Ulysses, Cupid Car Club, Make-Up—there was a lot of like—they were very good at their thing, but it really was a kind of hegemonic—I really felt like it was very dominant ideology. So other things, people were not— didn’t have that much space, I think. So doing the cabaret in Olympia was like, there’s a lot of other weird stuff, and it—

13 especially if you ask people to do something weird, they're like, “I'm going to do something weird!” You know? It was like a fun way. There were other people, like Quintron and…

Davis: Miss Pussycat.

Smith: Yeah. Those guys were incredible. I never—I mean, I saw that show in Olympia, and I was not—I didn’t really have—even though I could have just walked up to them and been like “wow,” but I didn’t. I never became friends with them. But I was impressed and sort of motivated by their like—its wildness, you know?

Davis: Can you remember in D.C. anyone who was doing something or who you thought maybe wanted to do something, that kind of didn’t have the space, like just sort of what you were referring to? Because it was this kind of…

Smith: I mean, just my friends that I—you know. Like, I think of Melissa Klein. I mean, weirdly—like Lois I know at that time was like— her music was not—there were tensions for her about playing acoustic music in this kind of rock ‘n’ roll town and feeling like “People here don’t get me.” Specific conversations of like [Ian] MacKaye said to put a certain kind of drum track on it. She was like, “Fuck you. You don’t understand me at all.” And in some ways, I feel like, for me, the first—that summer of ’90, watching Nation of Ulysses, that whole project, I loved.

0:39:12

It was very energizing, and I loved those guys. But as it sort of marched on, it just was more and more like you kind of have to be cool in a very specific way. And that was not of interest to me. So no, I didn’t really feel like people were—and certainly, Bratmobile, that was fun. I played my first show—I could barely like—[laugh] I could barely like not puke, you know? So it was fun, but it wasn’t like—I didn’t really see too much what I would consider like avant-garde stuff.

But in D.C. and previous to being specifically involved in the sort of Dischord scene, I did see things like—d.c. space had a pretty robust program of like, yes, rock, and things like Nation of Ulysses, and the kind of D.C. art damage bands of the time, and the kind of like goth sort of roots rock ‘n’ roll guys that were— yeah. I don’t think I ever saw The Slickee Boys, but they were these kind of like, you know, Johnny Thunders-type bands. But

14 there were also like Richard Kern programs—like of Richard Kern’s movies. And there was other weird stuff.

I saw Lisa Suckdog perform. And I saw her upstairs in the bathroom. She’s like, “I have to pee! I have to pee! But I have to hold it!” And I was like, “What is happening? What is happening?” And then later she—there was like a kitty litter box on the… and she peed. And you know, craziness. So I had already been exposed to things like that through going to things like that. And other things.

There was also this great gay strip club between 9:30 and d.c. space, which I never went to, but my friends from high school would go. I had two girlfriends that would go—two friends who were girls that would go. And they were just like—they were age 16-, 17-year-old girls, but the men would just like let them drink. And one—there were just like strippers with like a string tied around one of the dancers’ penises. And she was like, “What is that for?” He’s like, “So I can take a dog for a walk.” You know?

Davis: [laugh]

Smith: And, also, working at Classic Clothing, I was exposed to gay men whose lives were way more fun and interesting and weird than— you know.

Davis: Where was Classic Clothing?

Smith: Classic Clothing was in Georgetown, below M Street on Wisconsin. And it was there a long time. And then in the late ‘80s, they opened a second store on M Street, so I worked there.

0:42:06

Davis: And what was sort of like the umbrella of styles that were included in that place?

Smith: They had punk shoes, but then they literally had vintage clothing. And they also had a—it was a family-run business, and they had a huge warehouse in Anacostia that you would be reading the [Washington] City Paper, and the back would be “Classic Clothing. Once a year sale! Anything you wear out!” So me and my friend would go and like literally just come out like Oompa Loompas, you know. And like we’d just put stuff—they're like, “No, no, you can’t just put it around your neck. You have to wear it.” So we would come out like this.

Davis: [laugh]

15 Smith: And they really had an enormous amount of stuff. And if I were exposed to it today or even within the last 15 years, I would have asked, like, “Where else are you guys selling this stuff?” It was clearly part of some other vintage clothing network. But they just had a huge inventory. And when we would go to the warehouse, it was like dank. Everything wasn’t perfect. I feel like they were coming in like pallets from Europe or something like that. I don’t know.

Davis: How long did you work there until?

Smith: I probably worked there about a year. Yeah. Maybe less.

Davis: But it seemed to have an impact.

Smith: It does, when I think about it. And certainly coming from the—like my friends before, even the gaggle of girls I hung out with in high school were like goth girls with like purple hair extensions and crimped hair and lipstick and crazy makeup. And that was still kind of the trajectory I was in when I was working at Classic Clothing. But actually, when I think about that, that’s like—I first met Seth—he worked at Olsson’s, which was up the street, at the same time. But also what distinguished me from the sort of serious sort of Dischord women, because I was like wearing red lipstick, and nobody was wearing lipstick.

Davis: Where would you buy music during that time?

Smith: Probably at places like Olsson’s, Tower Records. There was another record shop—obviously Yesterday and Today. There was a place in Virginia. But, I liked bands like Scratch Acid. I was really into Scratch Acid.

0:45:00

And 9353. And Sonic Youth, of course. Like ’86, Sonic Youth. Yeah, so from places like that. But also I feel like I saw a lot more music than I actually bought.

Davis: So Yesterday and Today was somewhere that you would make the trek out?

Smith: I wouldn't go there, actually, because—I didn’t go there until I knew people in that kind of Dischord—because it was in Maryland, and I was from Arlington. And I really didn’t—I knew people in D.C., like art folks a little bit there. But it wasn’t—I didn’t really have this—anyway, I just didn’t know anybody that would take me out there. But also, music—I liked Nick Cave back

16 then. And I was reading like NME. And I loved The Smiths. I saw The Smiths in 1985 and had a cover of like Melody Maker, NME, and had someone cut my hair—my friend cut my hair like Morrissey’s and…

Davis: Wow. Where did they play?

Smith: They played at—where did they play? They played at a theatre that Ian [MacKaye] was a roadie at. He was doing roadie work kind of throughout, but I really remember seeing him—and we have since talked about seeing Morrissey and Johnny Marr have a conversation. It was very near the National Theatre. I don’t actually remember what the space was called, but it was an actual theatre. Probably like a thousand- to a three thousand-seater. Maybe a thousand-seater.

Davis: Was it the Warner Theatre?

Smith: Possibly. It might have been. I mean, it could easily have been. All those like—I saw Adam Ant in 1983. Stuff like that.

Davis: Yeah. I wanted to go back and ask about—you said you made zines while at the University of Maryland that you would essentially submit as projects.

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: Did you name any of those? What were those called, if they had titles?

Smith: I think one of the things you asked me about is one of the projects. We could look it up. But like—that Lo-Fi Technology one.

Davis: The Yet Another Lo-Fi Xtravaganza…

Smith: Yeah. I think that first one came from there.

Davis: Oh, OK.

Smith: From that time. And also—so I, when I was at Maryland, was like, “Oh, this is our affinity group.” Like punk is our affinity group. So I sort of was talking about it as like a political location, and the kind of self-consciousness about being a third-wave feminist and stuff like that. If I were a teacher, I’d think that would—you know? Like I think that my teacher did recognize that that was like real cultural work.

0:48:03

17 Davis: And would you just make one copy and that was it?

Smith: No, I know I made several. And really, just for the sake of saying something, I probably made like 25. I never made a lot of anything.

Davis: You'd distribute them in the same way, but the impetus for the project was…

Smith: Right.

Davis: …this class.

Smith: Yeah. And also at that time, I was sort of interested in collecting people’s stories. So, I interviewed Patrice Williams who now I think is called Yvette but—no. Anyway, she was somebody that worked at Dante’s, and she was—she and another person were doing this kind of like youth coming out of incarceration—I think I did one or two other like, “Oh, here’s a person with a project” and I just interviewed them about their project. And it just was like a straight like hardly edited interview.

Davis: Do you remember why you chose who you chose?

Smith: I think because I was interested in their projects.

Davis: You had mentioned something earlier about—at the time, like in D.C., that the words were just sort of coming out of you.

Smith: Mmhmm.

Davis: And do you find that that’s not true in the same way anymore?

Smith: No, no. I mean, also I don’t have the same kind of time that I did as a—yeah. So, that’s part of it. And also, just more—I mean, I'm a middle-age person now, with kind of middle-age concerns. I mean, I'm always interested in people, but I'm as interested in my neighbors across the street or, like, going to the planning department and putting—like, people are interesting to me, so I'm like, “So, what are we doing?” Just like practically every experience, I'm like—[laugh] I'm just sort of much more broadly interested in people’s—in our time together. So that’s more—yeah, I have less words coming out of me now.

Davis: How would you say, if at all, how those zines that you did at that point are reflected in who you are now, or the work you do? You already just partially answered that just now—that sort of interest in people and stories and things like that; that persists.

18 Smith: Yeah.

Davis: But other ways?

Smith: Well, I will also say that as a—I mean, there was something in my own identity and my search for my own identity that I was like writing, playing music. All that stuff was—that self-expression was very important, and pretty didactic.

0:51:01

Like a kind of chest-banging, ham-fisted kind of way. Which I think is what young people do. But I think, for instance, the sort of—I'm still the same person. I just—my insistence is less, because I feel like I have been able to choose a life for myself based on those interests and sort of make a path for myself based on those interests so that I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, including myself in a certain way.

So the question—I'm definitely the product of all that effort and time. Part of the effort is like the creative effort. Part of the effort is the sort of emotional psychological developmental work. And I always like to say I've had a wonderful life, you know? But otherwise I feel like sort of all that stuff is still with me.

Like I have a catering business now, and that’s not as politically sound as I would want it to be, certainly environmentally sound. But it’s a living, you know? And I feel like the more that that stabilizes as a business, it’s something that I can sort of refine, of like, “OK, this…” Just today, we've been—the past seven years, I have been distributing plastic forks and knives to people—like, I mean, a shockingly absurd amount of plastic cutlery. Like pallets and pallets of it. But—and I do feel terrible about it. [laugh]

But it’s sort of like—like now, I make enough money and there’s enough consistency of effort and money and support that I'm like, “OK, well maybe now I'm going to see…” And it is not small effort for me to get—I don’t have any way to get a dishwashing machine, which is a very strange thing to say, but it is a concern. The floor plan that we made for this kitchen did not include a commercial washer. It just included a sink for processing that. Which is fine for most of our dishes and our hotel pans, the things we serve food out of. But cutlery, it can’t—it would never be sufficient, because I think it’s—even what we clean is like—you know? The county says it’s fine, but I'm often like, I still can feel oil in there, or whatever.

0:54:02

19 It has been sanitized, it won’t hurt you, but it’s not something that someone would pick up and be like, “I'm going to use this to put in my face!” You know? [laugh]

Davis: [laugh] Right.

Smith: So that’s literally one of the things I was doing today. But I feel like it’s a process. So like this idea of kind of refining my efforts. Also, the history of my life is like, OK, in 1991, when we made that—or 1990 or whatever—when we made the—1991, I guess— when we made the Riot Grrrl zine, I—you know. It always does shock me, like Kathleen [Hanna] and—Kathleen and Allison [Wolfe] because they basically have made a career out of that moment. Which is awesome, and I don’t actually begrudge them. Like I have nothing but positive things to say about that. But to me, it seems like I'm on a journey, you know? As a 20-year-old, I was on a journey, and I am 48, and I'm still on a journey. And all of that is kind of like about walking a path around ideas, I guess.

So, I don’t think I've answered your question. I do think being at a place where people could share ideas—like OK, we saw each other at a rock show; I can give you this thing that I made in my bedroom. Like we could have a kind of—at least I could tell you my idea a little bit further than like, you know. And that also I didn’t have to be like in a band in order to show you my ideas, too. And that there was a public. That there was a public in our sort of immediate circle, but then there was a public that was like people that we didn’t know, that were also doing something similar, and happy to exchange what they were making.

And this was a thing that wasn’t happening. It was hard to find. There wasn’t really any money in it. It wasn’t for being popular. It was just for the kind of community of it. Making community, and kind of existing with likeminded people. And certainly you think about that in relationship to—that still—I don’t have that as much as I used to, but I still know a lot of people. I still feel like my relationships are important to me. I do also like having those things with kind of anybody I meet.

I do think that that moment’s effect on my world view was profound, and certainly my idea about my own agency, my own sort of human potential, what was possible was certainly more than what had been prescribed.

0:57:04

20 And I think about that in relationship to the way that people exchange ideas now, and it’s like, you are not in the room together. And being in the room together and then sending something that you write privately is—it’s a lot more intimate. I think that there is vitriol that can happen—I mean, that sort of infighting zine stuff— it was never—even when I think having people like Guy being upset at me for that thing, it never really felt like, “I'm gonna get that person!” I didn’t feel like that was attitude towards me. That was not my response to him saying that he didn’t—that he questioned what that was.

That did seem like that became more important, like outing people, or like kind of writing diatribes against particular people seemed like I was aware of that happening in other parts of zine life. Never interested me. I felt like it was—anyway. But I think, anyway, people met each other. Like we had actual human relationships in person, for better or worse.

Davis: I think the last question that I have is about digitization of these zines. We've emailed a bit in advance, and you seemed fine with the stuff…

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: But can you elaborate your thoughts on the idea of old zines that were sort of meant to maybe be ephemeral or of-the-moment? It’s one thing to have them in a folder that someone comes across, but it’s another to have it scanned and put into a new format, and one that’s essentially accessible to anyone.

Smith: Sure.

Davis: How do you feel about that?

Smith: Well, you certainly lose something. I made zines all the way up through The Quails, and was silk-screening, and having whirligigs and much more articulated. Those are material objects that are at their best in their materiality. But I don’t—I'm not a formalist. I do think if people are interested in that and they want to see it, there’s no reason to not. I do feel like that was a special time, and it was particular and intimate, but if—I would assume that part of the reason why you want to digitize it is for fans or people who are interested in it. And having that interest is also potentially referencing a kind of intimacy which I think is fine to share.

1:00:00

21 Like, here is this moment in culture where people did these things, and that’s how they communicated. And that’s cool, you know? I see digitized things, and I don’t—I don’t really often have—I do think it takes a lot of the romance out of it, you know? The kind of—again, its materiality is part of like what’s sexy about it, or—I don’t mean sexy, but I—titillating, or like there’s something that’s like—part of it is the thing. It’s like my human hand made this thing, and pushed it to your human hand. You received it, you opened it, et cetera. I think there’s a lot of energy in that.

But I don’t—I'm not against digitizing. I would assume that there would also be a physical archive, and if people are motivated to come see things in the physical realm, that’s a certain kind of person. I mean, this is weird—some of Red Rover was about going to the Library of Congress and like pulling up Patti Smith and [Tom] Verlaine’s zines, and just seeing that. That’s me. I don’t have time for that now. I wouldn't go to the University of Maryland to—or anywhere, to pull up anything. But I wish I would. Maybe when I'm retired, maybe, or whatever.

It’s like—it’s a great—I recommend it, you know? I would certainly encourage viewers to—if you can, or if it’s of interest, go see the object. It’s like the same thing as like looking at art in a book versus being actually in the physical presence of something, because it’s a different experience. But I'm not against it.

Davis: I couldn't tell if the way that I engage with digitized zines—I don’t enjoy it that much, even though—I mean, here I am digitizing zines. But I don’t know if that’s just because I came from a time where you read print zines, and you can’t escape that. I'm not sure if it truly is better, but it does certainly feel like a better experience to be reading paper. But why I want to digitize zines is just so people can still have access to the ideas.

Smith: Yeah.

Davis: And that’s true, I guess.

Smith: Yeah, and I think that’s worthwhile. Honestly, if there’s a public for it, absolutely have at it, you know? It’s flattering to think about Kathleen and Allison making like a 25-year career arc from this moment. It’s like, “Cool. Why not?” You know? Same thing. It’s like if people want it, that’s awesome.

1:03:01

And people do want those kinds of things. I don’t know why, but—when they should actually just be like—“Put your computer

22 down. Once you've seen this, put this down, and then just make something out of paper and pass it to somebody that you sort of know.” [laugh]

Davis: Yeah. I don’t have any other questions. Is there anything else you think we should talk about?

Smith: I don’t know. I hope I—I have a lot of fondness for all involved. I feel like whatever my critique has been, I always feel like I'm still—I'm still happy that this was the life that I had, and the people that I knew. You know what I mean? [laugh]

Davis: Yeah. [laugh] Well, thanks.

Smith: Yeah, for sure.

Davis: Thanks for your time.

[End of recording]

[This interview has been edited for clarity]